Full-motion video displays based upon analog video signals have long been available in the form of television. With recent advances in computer processing capabilities and affordability, full-motion video displays based upon digital video signals are becoming more widely available. Digital video systems can provide significant improvements over conventional analog video systems in creating, modifying, transmitting, storing, and playing full-motion video sequences.
Digital video includes large numbers of frames that are played or rendered successively. Each frame is a still image formed from an array of pixels based on the display resolution of a particular system. Typically, the amount of raw digital information in video is massive, takes up a large amount of storage, and uses a significant amount of bandwidth when being transmitted.
To address the limitations in storing or transmitting such massive amounts of digital video information, various video compression standards or processes have been established. In some instances, video encoders are used to take the video data and to encode it in a format which takes up less space. As a result, the bandwidth consumed between devices that transmit and receive the video information may be used more efficiently or more data can be transmitted between those devices in the same time.